Aleksei Navalny, Kremlin Critic, Gets 30 Days in Jail for Protest

MOSCOW — The Russian opposition figure Aleksei A. Navalny was sentenced on Tuesday to 30 days in jail for organizing a rally not approved by the government two days before President Vladimir V. Putin’s inauguration for a fourth term.

Mr. Navalny organized protests across Russia on May 5 under the slogan “He is not a czar to us.” Many of the demonstrations were not approved by local governments, and thousands of people took part. Hundreds were arrested, including Mr. Navalny, in Moscow.

The protests posed little threat to Mr. Putin, whose approval ratings hover above 80 percent. But the Kremlin has been increasingly unwilling to tolerate even minor displays of political discontent.

After announcing the verdict in a Moscow court, Judge Dmitri Gordeev returned to his chambers to consider a separate ruling on an accusation that Mr. Navalny had disobeyed police orders as he was detained. Posting to his Twitter account from the courtroom, Mr. Navalny wondered why this required a separate ruling, given that he had already received the maximum punishment.

“They gave me 30 days and the 'hearing’ still goes on,” Mr. Navalny wrote. “This is a very strange feeling, but this is Putin’s fifth term. Something has to be different from the fourth term,” he added. His count pointedly included the period from 2008 to 2012 when Mr. Putin was officially the prime minister and Dmitri A. Medvedev the president.

In court, Mr. Navalny called the judge “merely a supplement to a telephone handset,” according to his spokeswoman, alluding to a suspicion that judges in Russia receive instructions from the Kremlin via telephone.

Mr. Navalny attempted to challenge Mr. Putin in the latest presidential race. He organized a campaign that was unusually active for Russia, traveling to dozens of cities to speak at rallies and to open campaign offices. But he was repeatedly interrupted by Russian courts, which sentenced him to a total of 60 days in jail during the campaign period.

Leonid M. Volkov, Mr. Navalny’s chief of staff, said after the verdict that 30 days in jail was “very long and very unpleasant.”

“Our goal is to prove that our offices work and they are effective,” he wrote on Twitter. “We will have new rallies, new investigations, we will have projects that will be powerful and painful to the Kremlin.”